Yi Li

speaker

85 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 19 Jan

Yi Li’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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TED Talks Daily · The missing piece in climate action (it's not what you think) | Yi Li · 19 Jan 2026 podcast

I felt my stomach drop in that moment.

These farmers have gotten used to countless NGOs, donors, startups, rowing with grand climate visions, big promises only to vanish when funding dries up.

And without financial sustainability, we too would be gone in just a few seasons.

In that moment, finding financial sustainability for FarmWorks meant we had to sell all of our produce.

So that's when I threw myself into Kenya's vegetable wholesale market.

This is 5 a.m.

at Marikiti, one of the largest wholesale markets in downtown Nairobi.

It was chaotic.

So many sellers fighting for the best spot to sell, the customers are fighting for the highest quality creative tomatoes, and I'm Chinese, so I'm very much used to crowds and competition.

But this was next level.

I immediately knew I had to be part of this excitement.

I started delivering tomatoes with our trucks to the markets.

And on my first day, I got pushed down to the ground by a market vendor.

Not exactly the welcome I was expecting.

But over the years, I learned to be part of the market.

I figured out how prices actually work, how weather can totally change supply and demand overnight.

And I made friends with market ladies, many of them who are now our customers, proudly selling produce from FarmWorks.

What has the market figured out?

We were able to sell almost everything.

In fact, we realized that our own farms could never be enough to meet the full demand.

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